1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to digital rights management, and, more specifically, to encoding and decoding a unique signature in a video file that was created in a format that does not support digital rights management.
2. Description of the Background Art
There are companies that provide platforms that enable users to easily make videos, such as animations. For digital rights management, it sometimes desirable for a company to be able to identify the creator of a video, found on the Internet or elsewhere, that was made on the company's platform.
The problem is that known digital rights management (DRM) technology is not designed to identify a creator of a video. Rather, known DRM technology is designed either to prevent a user from copying media or to restrict access to media to certain devices. For example, known DRM technology prevents unauthorized copies by ensuring that unauthorized copies are missing data.
In addition, known DRM technology requires the media to be created in a format that specifically supports DRM technology. Videos made by lay people using a video-creation platform may not be made using a format that support DRM. This is further complicated by the fact that video hosting platforms, such as YOUTUBE, compress video files, which means any data encoded in the files may not survive compression. Therefore, there is a desire for a method for encoding a user ID in a video file, wherein the method enables the encoded user ID to survive compression and wherein the method does not require the video format used to create the video to specifically support DRM or encoding a user ID.